Valknut Weather (version 2)

Intro

Valknut on my knuckle, three points cut deep

Grandfather inked it by lantern where the sled dogs sleep

Said the cold picks its legends, leaves the rest to freeze

Called every scar a season, called every debt he'd seize

Verse

Nineteen winters old when the ice cracked at Marrow Bend

Truck went sideways, chains snapped, walked the last mile with no friend

Frost ate the tip of my thumb, left it purple then left it numb

Cold don't ask you twice for payment, takes what debt is owed and comes

Father ran the trapline back before the mill shut down for good

Said the wolves don't hate you, they just hunt the way they should

Three-day blizzard buried camp, we dug ourselves out clean

Momma kept a coffee tin of fire lit between

Dragged sixty pound of pelts through drifts up past my knee

Sold them cheap to men in town who never once thanked me

Second knot went in the ink the winter I lost Cole

Fever took him in the cabin, buried him in frozen coal

Third knot came the night I should've drowned beneath the floe

Pulled myself out on the rope, that's the only truth I know

Grandfather said a name ain't earned till winter tries to steal it

Mine's still mine, three times over, cold can't ever feel it

Chorus

It's valknut weather, three knots tied by frost

The cold don't kill the chosen, it just counts the cost

Every knuckle got a winter, every scar's a name

The ones who make it through it wear the frost like flame

Verse

Twenty years now, boys call me chief along the line

I teach them ice talks slow, it hums before it breaks its spine

Di